New from Cambridge University Press!

Sociolinguistics from the Periphery "presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users."

Book Information

The way in which people address one another is crucial to expressing socialrelationships and is closely linked with cultural values. In English wecall some people by their first names, and others “Mr” or “Ms”, followed bytheir surname. In some other languages there are different ways of saying“you” depending on the degree of social distance. Exploring practices inthe family, school, university, the workplace and in letters, this bookreveals patterns in the varied ways people choose to address one another,from pronouns to first names, from honorifics to titles and last names.Examples are taken from contemporary English, French, German and Swedish,using rich data from focus group research, interviews, chat groups, andparticipant observation.